What I Remember, Volume 1

There was one among the many acquaintances we made at Vienna who belonged in nowise to any division of its society, but who was, like ourselves, to be met with among them all. This was old John Cramer the pianist. I took a great liking to him. The mingled simplicity, bonhomie, shrewdness, and old-world courtesy of the old man delighted me. He was full of old-world stories, generally ending any anecdote of some one of the many notable personages he had known with a sigh, and “Well, peace to his manes!” pronounced as one syllable, as I have mentioned in an earlier page. For old John Cramer had lived in the days before the schoolmaster had gone “abroad” so widely as in these latter times. The old maestro had just written a monody to the memory of Malibran, then recently lost to the world of music prematurely. “It is full of feeling,” writes my mother, “and, as I listened to this veteran pianist, as he performed for me his simple and classic little composition, and marked the delicacy and finish of his style, unincumbered by a single movement in which the conceptions of a harmonious genius are made to give way before the meretricious glory of active fingers, I felt at the very bottom of my heart that I was rococo, incorrigibly rococo, and that such I should live and die.”

Another specialty, which in those days gave to Vienna much of the physiognomy which made it different in outward appearance from any other of the great capitals of Europe, and which would not be observed there at the present time, was caused by the heterogeneousness of the countries which compose the empire, and the very motley appearance of the specimens of all of them which might be found in the capital. A Parisian tells you in France that a provincial in the streets of Paris is as recognisable at a glance as if he were ticketed on the forehead. And so he may be to a Parisian. But the eccentricities of his appearance are not such as to impart any variety to the moving panorama in the streets of Paris as it appears to a stranger. The Breton, the Provencal, the Bearnais makes himself look, when he visits Paris, as much like a Parisian as he can, and flatters himself no doubt that he succeeds perfectly. But Croatians, Bohemians, wild-looking figures from Transylvania might be seen in the streets of Vienna, precisely as they might have been seen in their own distant homes. Strange and not a little sinister looking groups of Hungarian gipsies, encampments outside and at the foot of the walls, of Bohemian waggoners, caftaned Jews from the distant parts of Galicia, all added to the strangeness and much to the picturesqueness of the city. I remember one especial group, the extreme barbarism of whose appearance, incredible filthiness, and wild, picturesque, but very forbidding physiognomies, particularly attracted my attention. I was told that they were gipsies from Croatia.

On the whole it is—or rather I should say was—evident that one has travelled far eastward to reach Vienna, and the whole physiognomy of the place is modified by that fact.

I am unwilling to close this chapter of my Vienna reminiscences without mentioning a lady, whose very exceptional histrionic talent had impressed me as vividly as it did my mother, who has given an honourable place in her volumes to Madame Rettich. I subsequently became intimate with her very charming daughter in Italy, and it is from her that I learned the fact that her mother had been the first actress to personate Goethe’s “Gretchen” on the stage. Considerable doubt had been felt as to the expediency of the attempt. But Madame Rettich made it—not for the first time at Vienna, but at some provincial theatre—with entire success.

CHAPTER XVI.

It is hardly enough to say, as is said above, that the nature of the two men was as far as the poles asunder, it was singularly contrasted. To both of them the salus patriæ has ever been the suprema lex; and both of them, with increasingly accepted wisdom; have sought that supreme end in the strengthening of the principle of authority. The history of human affairs has not yet sufficiently unfolded itself for it to be possible to say in this year of grace, 1887, whether they have done so with very different measures of success. But it is very curious to mark the similarity thus far existing between the two great ministers, chancellors, and statesmen, combined with such very marked (though perhaps in fact more or less superficial) differences between the two men.

Prince Bismarck has not been thought, even by those who have most thoroughly admired and applauded his fortiter in re, to have very successfully combined with it the suaviter in modo. The habit of clothing the iron hand with a velvet glove has not been considered to be among his characteristics. And these qualities were very pre-eminently those of the other all-powerful minister.

And the outward and bodily presentment of the two men was as contrasted and as expressive of this difference as that of two high-born gentlemen could well be. I saw recently in Berlin a portrait by Lembach of the great North German chancellor. It is one of those portraits which eminently accomplishes that which it is the highest excellence of every great portrait to achieve, in that it gives those who look at it with some faculty of insight not only that outward semblance of the man, which all can recognise, but something more, which it is the artist’s business to reveal to those who have not the gift of reading it for themselves. That portrait, in common with most of those by the great masters in the art of portraiture, reveals to you, with an instantly recognised truthfulness, the interior and intrinsic nature of the man, with a luminousness which your own gaze on the living person would not achieve for you. I have also before me a portrait of Prince Metternich, made at the time of which I am writing by M. Hervieu in crayons for my mother. And without of course claiming either for the artist or for the style of work such power as belongs to the portrait of which I have been speaking, I may say that it does very faithfully and expressively give you the presentment of a man in whom strength of will, tenacity of purpose, and high intellectual power are combined with suave gentleness of manner and an air of high-bred courtesy.

That is the man whose lineaments I look on in the sketch, and that is the man with whom I had many opportunities of being in company, and had on several occasions the high honour of conversing. Whether it might be possible for a man devoid of all advantage of feature to produce on those brought into contact with him the same remarkable impression of dignity, the consciousness of high station, and perfection of courtly bearing combined with a pellucid simplicity of manner, I cannot say. But it is true that all this was rendered more possible in the case of Metternich by great personal handsomeness. He was, of course, when I saw him, what may be called an old man—a white-headed old man—but I doubt if at any time of his life he could have been a better-looking man.

My mother notes in her book on Vienna and the Austrians, that as we were returning from a dinner at the house of the English ambassador, Sir Frederic Lamb, where we had just met Metternich for the first time, I observed that he was just such a man as my fancy painted Sir William Temple to have been, and that she thought the illustration a good one. And I don’t think that any subsequent knowledge or reflection would lead me to cancel it.

He was a man of middle height, slenderly made rather than thin, though carrying no superfluous flesh; upright, though without the somewhat rigid uprightness which usually characterises military training to the last, however far distant the training time may have been; and singularly graceful in movement and gesture. He must have been a man of sound body and even robust constitution, but he did not look so at the time of which I am speaking. Not that he had the appearance or the manner of a man out of health; but his extreme refinement and delicacy of feature seemed scarcely consistent with bodily strength. I remember a man—the old Dr. Nott spoken of in the first chapter of this book—who must have been about the same age with Metternich when I first saw him, who equalled him in clear-cut delicacy and refinement of feature, who was certainly a high-bred gentleman, not altogether ignorant of the ways and manners of courts, and who was emphatically a man of intellectual pursuits and habits. But there all equality and similarity between the two men ends. Good, refined, elegant Dr. Nott produced no such impression on those near him as the Austrian statesman did. There must have been therefore a something in the latter beyond all those advantages of person and feature with which he was so eminently endowed. And this “something” I take to have been produced partly by native intellectual power, and partly by the long possession of quite uncontested authority.

Upon that first occasion I had no opportunity of hearing any word from Metternich save one gracious phrase on being presented to him. He took my mother in to dinner. I was seated at a far distant part of the huge round table, where I could see, but not hear. And it was the fashion in Vienna for people to leave the house at which they had been dining almost immediately after taking their cup of coffee. But before the party separated it had been arranged that we were to dine at the minister’s house on the following Monday.

But all this time I have said no word of the Princess Metternich, who also dined with Sir Frederic Lamb on that, to me, memorable day. In one word, she was one of the most beautiful women I ever looked on. She was rather small, but most delicately and perfectly formed in person, and the extreme beauty of her face was but a part, and not the most peerless part, of the charm of it. To say that it sparkled with expression, and an expression which changed with each changing topic of conversation, is by no means enough. Every feature of her face was instinct with meaning and intelligence. The first impression her face gave me was that of a laughter-loving and mutine disposition. But my mother, who saw much of her—more, of course, than it was possible for her to see of the chancellor (especially while the princess was sitting for her portrait by M. Hervieu for her, during which sitting my mother, by her express stipulation, was always with her), and who learned to love her dearly, testified that there was much more behind; that her unbounded affection and veneration for her husband was not incompatible with the formation of thoughtful opinions of her own upon the questions which were then exercising the minds of politicians, as well as all the higher topics of human interest.

I dined at Metternich’s table on the day mentioned above as well as on sundry other occasions; on some of which I was fortunate enough to make one of the little circle enjoying his conversation. Of course the dinner parties at the prince’s house were affairs of much magnificence and splendour. But I had, on more than one occasion, the higher privilege of dining with him en famille.

On both and all occasions, whether it was a grand banquet of thirty persons or more, or a quite unceremonious dinner en famille, the prince’s practice was the same, and was peculiar.

He did not in any wise partake of the spread before him. He had always dined previously at one o’clock. But he had a loaf of brown bread and a plate of butter put before him; and, while his guests were dining, he occupied himself with spreading and cutting a succession of daintily thin slices of bread and butter for his own repast.

Victor Emmanuel used similarly to dine in the middle of the day, and at his state banquets used to take no more active part than was involved in honouring them with his presence. But Metternich, I think, would not have said what my friend G. P. Marsh, the United States minister, once told me Victor Emmanuel said to him on one occasion. Mr. Marsh, as dean of the diplomatic body (it was before any of the great powers sent ambassadors to the court of the Quirinal), was seated next to his majesty at table. Innumerable dishes were being carried round in long succession, when the king, turning to his neighbour with a groan, said, “Will this never come to an end?” I have no doubt Marsh cordially echoed his majesty’s sentiments on the subject.

The words of men who have occupied positions in any degree similar to that of Prince Metternich are apt to be picked up, remembered, and recorded, when in truth the only value of the utterances in question is to show that such men do occasionally think and speak like other mortals! And my notebooks are not without similar evidences of gobemoucherie on my own part. But there is one subject on which I have heard Metternich speak words which really are worth recording. That subject was the Emperor Napoleon Buonaparte.

Of course on such a topic the Austrian statesman might have said much that he was not at liberty to say; and there was also much that he might have said which could not have found place in one halfhour’s conversation. The particular point upon which I heard him speak was the celebrated interview, at which the emperor lost his temper because he could not induce Austria to declare war.

Metternich described the way in which the emperor, with the manners of the guard-room rather than those of the council-chamber, suddenly and violently tossed his cocked hat into the corner of the room, “evidently expecting that I should pick it up and present it to him,” said the old statesman; “but I judged it better to ignore the action and the intention altogether, and his majesty after a minute or two rose and picked it up himself.”

He went on to express his conviction that all this display of passion on the emperor’s part was altogether affected, fictitious, and calculated; and said that similar manifestations of intemperate violence were by no means infrequently used by the emperor with a view to produce calculated effects, and were often more or less successful.

It would be a great mistake to suppose that the most cynical observer could have detected the slightest shade of bitterness in the words or the manner of Prince Metternich. On that field of battle at all events the honours did not fall to the share of Napoleon. And his aged adversary spoke of the encounter with the amused pleasantry and easy smile of a veteran who recounts passages at arms in which his part has been that best worth telling.

But with a graver manner he went on to say, that the most unpleasant part of the circumstance connected with dealing with Napoleon arose from the fact that he was not a gentleman in any sense of the word, or anything like one. Of course the prince, with his unblemished sixteen quarterings, was not talking of anything connected with Napoleon’s birth. And I doubt whether he may have been aware that Napoleon Buonaparte was technically gentle by virtue of his descent from an ancient Tuscan territorial noble race. Metternich, in expressing the opinion quoted, was not thinking of anything of the kind. He was speaking of the moral nature of the man. In these days, after all that has since that time been published on the subject, the expression of Metternich seems almost like the enunciation of an accepted and recognised truism. Nevertheless, even now the judgment on such a point, of one who had enjoyed (no, certainly not enjoyed, but we will say undergone) so much personal intercourse with the great conqueror, is worth recording.

My mother has given an account of the same conversation, which I have here recorded, in the second volume of her book on Vienna and the Austrians. Her account tallies with mine in all essentials (I did not read it—in this half-century—till after I had written the above sentences); but she relates one or two circumstances which I have omitted; and she apparently did not hear what the prince said afterwards about Napoleon as a gentleman—or perhaps it was said upon another occasion, which I cannot assert may not have been the case.

One point of my mother’s narrative should not be omitted. Metternich, observing that it was impossible for any human being to have heard what passed between him and Napoleon, but that everybody had read all about it, said that Savary relates truly the incident of the hat, which must have been told him by Napoleon himself. This is very curious.

Another amusing anecdote recounted by Metternich one evening, when my mother and myself, together with only a very small circle of habitués were present, I remember well, and intended to give my own reminiscences of it in this place. But I find the story so well told by my mother, and it is so well worth repeating, that I will reproduce her telling of it.

“During the hundred days of Napoleon’s extraordinary but abortive restoration, he found himself compelled by circumstances, bon gré mal gré to appoint Fouché minister of police. About ten days after this arch-traitor was so placed, Prince Metternich was informed that a stranger desired to see him. He was admitted, and the prince recognised him as an individual whom he had known as an employé at Paris. But he now appeared under a borrowed name, bringing only a fragment of Fouché’s handwriting, as testimony that he was sent by him. His mission he said was of the most secret nature, and in fact, only extended to informing the prince that Fouché was desirous of offering to his consideration propositions of the most important nature. The messenger declared himself wholly ignorant of their purport, being authorised only to invite the prince to a secret conference through the medium of some trusty envoy, who should be despatched to Paris for the purpose. The prince’s reply was, ‘You must permit me to think of this.’ The agent retired, and the Austrian minister repaired to the emperor, and recounted what had passed. ‘And what do you think of doing?’ said the emperor.

“‘I think,’ replied the prince, ‘that we should send a confidential agent, not to Paris, but to some other place that may be fixed upon, who shall have no other instructions but to listen to all that the Frenchman, who will meet him there, shall impart, and bring us faithfully an account of it.’

“The emperor signified his approbation; ‘And then,’ continued the prince, ‘as we were good and faithful allies, and would do nothing unknown to those with whom we were pledged to act in common, I hastened to inform the allied sovereigns, who were still at Vienna, of the arrival of the messenger, and the manner in which I proposed to act.’ The mysterious messenger was accordingly dismissed with an answer purporting that an Austrian, calling himself Werner, should be at a certain hotel in the town of Basle, in Switzerland, on such a day, with instructions to hear and convey to Prince Metternich whatever the individual sent to meet him should deliver. This meeting took place at the spot and hour fixed. The diplomatic agents saluted each other with fitting courtesy, and seated themselves vis-à-vis, each assuming the attitude of a listener.

“‘May I ask you, sir,’ said the envoy from Paris at length, ‘what is the object of our meeting?’

“‘My object, sir,’ replied the Austrian, ‘is to listen to whatever you may be disposed to say.’

“‘And mine,’ rejoined the Frenchman, ‘is solely to hear what you may have to communicate.’

“Neither the one nor the other had anything further to add to this interesting interchange of information, and after remaining together long enough for each to be satisfied that the other had nothing to tell, they separated with perfect civility, both returning precisely as wise as they came.

“Some time after the imperial restoration had given way to the royal one in France, the mystery was explained. Fouché, cette revolution incarnée, as the prince called him, no sooner saw his old master and benefactor restored to power, than he imagined the means of betraying him, and accordingly despatched the messenger, who presented himself to Prince Metternich. Fouché was minister of police, and probably all the world would have agreed with him in thinking that if any man in France could safely send off a secret messenger it was himself. But all the world would have been mistaken, and so was Fouché. The Argus eyes of Napoleon discovered the proceeding. The first messenger was seized and examined on his return. The minister of police was informed of the discovery, and coolly assured by his imperial master that he would probably be hanged. The second messenger was then despatched by Napoleon himself with exactly the same instructions as the envoy who met him from Vienna, to the effect that he was to listen to all that might be said to him, and when questioned himself, confess, what was the exact truth, that all he knew of the mission on which he came was that he was expected to remember and repeat all that he should hear.”

On the 30th of November in that year I witnessed the by far most gorgeous pageant I ever saw—for I was not in Westminster Abbey on the 21st of June, 1887—the installation of eleven Knights of the Golden Fleece. As a pageant, nothing, I think, could exceed the gorgeous and historic magnificence of this ceremony; but no “Kings of the Isles brought gifts,” nor was the imperial body-guard composed of sovereign princes or their representatives. In significance, that show and all others such, even the meeting of the Field of the Cloth of Gold itself, is eclipsed by the ever-memorable day which England has just seen. But it was not only a very grand but a very interesting sight, the whole details of which may be found by those interested in such matters very accurately described in the volume by my mother which I have so often quoted.

On the very next day I saw another sight which I think it probable no subsequent sight-seer in Vienna during all the half-century that has elapsed since that day has seen, or any will see in the future. It was a sight more monstrously contrasted with the scene I had yesterday witnessed than it could well enter into the human mind to conceive. It was a visit to the vast, long-disused catacombs under the cathedral church of St. Stephen. It was then about sixty years, as I was told—now more than a hundred—since these vaults were used as a place of sepulture. Here, as in many other well-known instances, the special peculiarities of soil and atmosphere prevent all the usual processes of decay, and the tens of thousands of corpses which have been deposited there—very many uncoffined and unshrouded during the visitation of the plague in 1713—have become to all intents and purposes mummies. They retain not only the form of human beings, but in many cases the features retain the ghastly expression which was their last when the breath of life left them. The countless forms, which never apparently from the day they were deposited there had been subjected to any sort of arrangement whatever, lay in monstrous confused heaps, mingled with shattered remains of coffins. The skin in every case had become of the consistency of very thick and tough leather, not quite so thick as that used for the sole of a stout shoe, but a good deal thicker than what is generally used for the upper leather even of the stoutest. There was not the slightest disagreeable odour in any part of the vaults. In the course of a long life I have seen very many strange sights, but never any one to match that in weird strangeness and impressive horror. If any sight on earth merits the degraded epithet “awful,” it must be that of those fearsome catacombs.

What I have written here conveys but a very imperfect notion of all that we saw and felt during our progress through that terrible succession of vaults. But I abstain from chronicling the sights of this charnel-house for the same reason that I refrained from any attempt at describing the cloth of gold and the velvets and the silks and satins of the previous day. The detailed description of them may all be found in my mother’s book, in the fortieth chapter of which the reader so inclined may sup full of horrors to his heart’s content. I will content myself with testifying to the perfect accuracy and absence of exaggeration in the account there given.

My mother expresses disapproval of the authorities who permit such an exhibition, and she is very vague as to the means by which we obtained admission to it. Nor does my memory furnish any clear information upon this point, but I have a strong impression that it was all an affair of bribery, managed “under the rose” (what a phrase for such an exploit!) by backstairs influence in some way. I do not think that the first comer, with however large a fee in his hand, could have caused the door of that chamber of horrors to be opened to him. There are, it is true, sundry words and incidents in my mother’s account which seem to indicate that the showman guide, who attended us, was in the habit of similarly attending others; but I am persuaded that my mother was in error in supposing, if she did suppose, that to be the case. Unquestionably the man was at home in the gruesome place, and well acquainted with all the parts of it, but I have reason to be persuaded that his familiarity with it arose simply from the habit of pillaging the remains of the coffins for firewood!

Not long after this memorable expedition to the catacombs I received a communication from Birmingham which rendered it necessary for me to leave Vienna and turn my face homewards.

CHAPTER XVII.

I remember that I was tremendously great-coated, having, besides my “box-coat,” a “buffalo robe,” which I had brought back with me from America, and I have no recollection of suffering at all from cold. We proceeded in very leisurely fashion; and I well remember the reply of the courier to my question, how long we were to remain at the place at which we were to dine, given with an air of mild surprise at my thinking such a demand necessary. “Till we have done dinner!” said the courier—“Bis wir gespeist haben!” The words seem still to echo in my ears! To me, whose experiences were of the Quicksilver mail!

When we had done dinner, and he asked me with leisurely courtesy if I had dined well, he said, in answer to my confessing that I could have wished nothing more, unless it were a cup of coffee, if perchance there were one ready, “No doubt the hostess will make us one. It is best fresh made!” And so, while the imperial mail, and all the Paris and London letters, and the post-horses, waited at the door, the coffee was made and leisurely discussed!

I will upon this occasion also spare the reader all guide-book chatter, and pass on to the arrival of myself and the friend who was with me, at Dover, which arrival was a somewhat remarkable one.

We had travelled by Antwerp, which I wished to revisit for the sake of the cathedral, and crossed from Ostend, where also I was not sorry to pass a day.

We had a long and nasty passage, but at last reached Dover to find the whole town and the surrounding hills under snow, and to be met by the intelligence that all communication between Dover and London was interrupted! Even the boat which used to ply between Dover and the London Docks would not face the abominable weather, and was not running. There was nothing for it but to take up our abode at the “King’s Head” (no “Lord Warden” in those days!), and wait for the road to be opened.

We waited one day, two days, with no prospect of any amelioration of our position. On the third day two young Americans who were in the house, equally weather-bound with ourselves, and equally impatient of their imprisonment, assured us that in their country the matter would speedily be remedied, and declared their determination of getting to Canterbury on a sledge. We had heard by that time that from Canterbury to London the road was open. The people at the “King’s Head” assured us that no such attempt had any chance of succeeding. But of course our American friends considered that to be a strictly professional opinion, and determined on starting. We agreed to share the adventure with them. Four of the best post-horses we could find in Dover were hired, a couple of postboys, whose pluck was stimulated by promises of high fees, were engaged, and a sledge was rigged under the personal supervision of our experienced friends.

On the fourth day we got ourselves and our respective trunks on to the sledge, and started among the ill-omened prognostications of our host of the “King’s Head” and his friends. I think the postboys did their utmost bravely, but at the end of about five miles from Dover they dismounted from their floundering horses and declared the enterprise an impossible one. It was totally out of the question, they said, to reach Canterbury. It would be quite as much as they could do to get back to Dover.

What was to be done? The boys were so evidently right that the Americans did not attempt to gainsay their decision. A council of war was called, the upshot of which was that our two American allies decided to return to Dover with their and our baggage and wraps, while my friend and I determined at all risks to push on to Canterbury on foot. We had eleven miles of bleak country before us, which was simply one uniform undulating field of snow. The baffled postboys gave us many minute directions of signs and objects by which we were to endeavour to keep the road. We had started from Dover about nine o’clock in the morning. It was then not quite noon. The mail would leave Canterbury at ten at night for London, and we had therefore ten hours before us for our undertaking.

We thought that four, or, at the outside, five would be ample for the purpose, if we were ever to get to Canterbury at all. But we did not reach “The Fountain” in that much-longed-for city till past eight that evening!

It was a terrible walk. Of course at no conceivable rate of progression could we have been eight hours in walking eleven miles if we had continued to progress at all. But we lost the road again and again! sometimes got far away from it, and fought our way back to it by the directions obtained at farm-houses or labourers’ cottages, from people who evidently deemed our enterprise a desperate one. Mostly we were struggling knee-deep in snow, once or twice plunging into and out of drifts over our waists. We were not on foot quite all the time; for once we rested in a hospitable cottage for an hour, when we were about six miles from Canterbury. Our host there, who was, I take it, a waggoner, strongly advised us to give it up, and offered to let us pass the night in his cottage. We were already very much beaten, and were sorely tempted to close with his proposal. Perhaps, if we had known that we should never, as was the case, see those Americans again, we should have done so. But much as our bodies needed rest, our souls needed triumph more! So we turned out into the snow again, and—by eight o’clock did reach the hospitable “Fountain”!

But we were in a sad plight, desperately wearied, a good deal bruised and knocked about, and as thoroughly wet through literally as though we had been walking in water instead of snow. Rest was delicious; a hot supper was such delight as no “gods” had ever enjoyed. Good beds would have been Elysium! But—the thought of the next morning gave us pause. We had no rag of clothing of any sort save the thoroughly soaked things on our backs. No boots or shoes! And how should we possibly put on again those on our feet if once they were taken off? In London, if once reached, all these troubles would be at an end!

Finally we decided to go on by the mail at ten that night. But here a fresh disappointment awaited us. The mail was booked full inside! There were two outside places, those on the roof behind the driver, available. But we were dead beat, wet through to the bone, unprovided with any wrap of any kind, and it was freezing hard!

But on to the mail we climbed at ten o’clock. I believe the good hostess of “The Fountain” genuinely thought our proceeding suicidal, and the refusal of her beds absolutely insane.

That journey from Canterbury to London was by far the worst I ever made. It really was a very bad business. But at every change of horses I got down, and holding on by the coach behind ran as far as my breath and strength would allow me, and thus knocked a little warmth into my veins. I could not persuade my companion to do likewise. He seemed to be wearied and frozen into apathy. The consequence was that whereas I was after some twelve hours in bed not a jot the worse, he was laid up for a fortnight.

Shortly afterwards I assumed my new duties at Birmingham. The new building had been completed, and was—or rather is, as all the world may see to the present day—a very handsome one. The head master, whose assistant I specially was, was Dr. Jeune, who became subsequently Bishop of Peterborough. The second master, Mr. Gedge, had also an assistant named Mason. Our duties were to teach Latin and Greek to any of the sons of the inhabitants of Birmingham who chose to avail themselves of King Edward’s benevolent foundation. None of the masters had anything to do with the business of lodging or victualling boys. The boys were all day boys, and our business was to teach them Latin and Greek during certain hours of every day.

I soon became aware by a strangely subtle process of feeling rather than observation that my eight years’ Winchester experience of schoolboy life and ways had not constituted a favourable preparation for my present work. I felt that I was working in an atmosphere and on a material that was new to me. It would be absurd to imagine that all those sons of Birmingham tradesmen were stupider or duller boys than the average of our Winchester lads. But it appeared to me that it was far more difficult to teach them with any fair amount of success. They were no doubt all, or nearly all, the sons of men who had never learned anything in their lives save the elements of a strictly commercial education. And I felt myself tempted to believe that the results of heredity must extend themselves even to the greater or lesser receptivity of one description of teaching instead of another. I suppose that the descendant of a long line of shoemakers would be more readily taught how to make a shoe than how to build a ship. And it may be in like manner that ingenuas didicisse fideliter artes comes more readily to a boy whose forefathers have for generations done the same thing than it would to the descendant of generations unmoulded by any such discipline!

Corporal punishment was used, and naturally had to be resorted to much more frequently by me than by my superior, whose work was concerned with the older and better conducted portion of the boys. In fact as far as my recollection at the present day goes, it seems to me that hardly any morning or afternoon passed without the application of the cane. And this corporal castigation, though devoid of all the judicial formality which might have made our Winchester “scourging” a really moral punishment if the frequency of it and the prevailing sentiment upon the subject both of masters and scholars had been other than it was, was in truth a very much severer infliction as regards the absolute pain to be suffered by the patient. Three or four strokes with the cane over the palm of the hand would be very much worse than the perfunctory swishing with the peculiar Winchester rod. I do not remember that this caning was ever judicially used as a sentence to be executed at any future time, or that it was ever, for the most part, used to punish the idleness which had prevented a boy from learning his lessons at his home. It was used almost exclusively, as far as I remember, for the preservation of order and silence during the school hours, and the correction of the offender followed instantly on the commission of the offence.

And this necessity of enforcing order among a very undisciplined crew of some forty or fifty lads of ages varying from perhaps twelve to about fourteen or fifteen was by far the most irksome and difficult part of my duty. I was accustomed to tuition. But the cumulation of the office of beadle with that of teacher was new to me, and I did not like it. And still less did I like the constant tendency of the urgent duties of the first office to encroach upon those of the second.

My scholastic experiences had accustomed me to a state of things in which idleness, violence, daredevil audacity, and neglect of duty had been common enough, but in which organised trickery and deception had been rarely seen. And I felt myself unfitted for the duties of a policeman among these turbulent Birmingham lads. I never saw the face of any one of them save during the school hours; and I remember thinking at the time that, had this been otherwise, I might have obtained a moral influence over at least some of them, which might have been more useful than all my efforts during school hours to force the rules and principles of syntax into unwilling brains, accustomed to the habitual defiance of them during all the remainder of their lives.

It appeared to me that I was engaged in the perpetual, and somewhat hopeless, task of endeavouring to manufacture silk purses out of sows’ ears; and I confess that I never put on my academical gown to go into school without feeling that I was going to an irksome, and, I feared, unprofitable labour. I tried hard to do my duty; but I fear that I was by no means the right man in the right place.

No preparation of any kind, beyond assuming my gown and trencher cap, before going into school was needed, and I had, therefore, abundance of leisure, during which I did a considerable quantity of miscellaneous reading, not perhaps altogether so unprofitable as the advocates of regular study devoted to some well-defined end might suppose.

We endeavoured—my colleague Mason and I—I remember, to get up a debating society among the few—very few—young men, with whom we had become acquainted. But it did not succeed. Young Birmingham, intent on making, and on its way to make, “plums” in hardware, did not think that “debating” was the best way of employing the hours that could be spared from the counting-house.

There might, no doubt, have been found a better element of social intercourse in the younger clergy of the town; but they were all strongly “evangelical,” which was at that time quite sufficient to entail an oil-and-vinegar-like mutual repulsion between them and the young Wykehamist. And this, involving as it does a confession of a discreditable amount of raw young-man’s prejudice, I mention as an illustration of the current opinions, feelings, and mental habits of the time, for, after all, I was not more prejudiced and more stupid than the rest of the world around me.

In fact my life at Birmingham was for the most part a very solitary one. I used to come home tired and worn out to my lodgings with Mrs. Clements in New Hall Street; and the prospect of a lonely evening with my book, my teapot, and my pipe, was not unwelcome to me, for it was, at least, repose and quiet after noise and turmoil. Every now and then I used to dine and pass the evening with Dr. Jeune; and these were my red-letter days. Jeune had married the daughter of Dr. Symonds, the Warden of Wadham. She was a tall and very handsome woman, as well as an extremely agreeable one. At first, I remember, I used to think that if she had been the daughter of anybody else than the “Head of a House,” one just emerging from statu pupillari might have found her more charming. But this soon wore off as we got to know each other better. And long talks with Mrs. Jeune are the pleasantest—indeed, I think I may say the only pleasant—recollections of my life at Birmingham.

CHAPTER XVIII.

The decision was a very momentous one. As might have been anticipated, the “deferring” of any steps in the direction of a professional career of any sort turned out eventually to be the final abandonment of any such. It could hardly be otherwise in the case of a young man of twenty-eight, which was my age at the time. I was the son of a father who had left absolutely nothing behind him, and I had no prospect whatever of any independent means from any other source. It is true that property settled on my mother before her marriage would in any case suffice to keep me from absolute destitution, but that was about all that could be said of it. And certainly the decision to which my mother and I came during these walks round and round the Hadley garden was audacious rather than prudent.

I have never regretted it during any part of the now well-nigh half a century of life that has elapsed since the resolution was taken. I have been, I have not the smallest doubt, a much happier man than I should have been, had I followed a more beaten track. My brother Anthony used to say of me that I should never have earned my salt in the routine work of a profession, or any employment under the authoritative supervision of a superior. I always dissented, and beg still to record my dissent, from any such judgment. But, as it is, I can say with sincerely grateful recognition in my heart, that I have been a very happy—I fear I may say an exceptionally happy—man. Despite this, I do not think that were I called upon to advise a young man in precisely similar circumstances to mine at that time, I should counsel him to follow my example: for I have been not only a happy but a singularly fortunate man. Again and again at various turning points of my life I have been fortunate to a degree which no conduct or prudence of my own merited.

I was under no immediate obligation to work in any way, but I cannot say of myself I have been an idle man. I have worked much, and sometimes very hard.

Upon one occasion—the occasion was that of sudden medical advice to the effect that it was desirable that I should take my first wife from Florence for a change of climate, which I was not in funds to do comfortably—I planned and wrote from title-page to colophon and sold a two-volume novel of the usual size in four-and-twenty days. I had a “turn of speed” in those days in writing as well as walking. I could do my five miles and three-quarters in an hour at a fair toe and heel walk, and I wrote a novel in twenty-four days—it was written indeed in twenty-three, for I took a whole holiday in the middle of the work. Of course it may be said that the novel was trash. But it was as good as, and was found by the publisher to be more satisfactory than, some others of the great number I have perpetrated. And I should like those who may imagine that the arduous nature of the feat I accomplished was made less by the literary imperfection of the work to try the experiment of copying six hundred post octavo pages in the time. I found the register of each day’s work the other day. The longest was thirty-three pages. It was no great matter to have written three-and-thirty pages in one day, but I am disposed to think that few men (or even women) could continue for as many days at so high an average of speed. My brother used to say that he could not do the like to save his life and that of all those dearest to him. And he was not a slow writer. Of course when my book was done I was nearly done too. But I do not know that I was ever any the worse for the effort. The novel in question was called Beppo the Conscript.

No, I have not been an idle man since the day when my mother and myself decided that I was to follow no recognised profession. The long, too long, series of works which have been published as mine will account for probably considerably less than half the printed matter which I am responsible for having given to the world. Nor can I say that I was driven to work “by hunger and request of friends.” During all my long career of authorship there was no period at which I could not have lived an idle man—not so well as I wished, certainly; but I was not driven by imperious necessity.

Yet I have a very pretty turn for idleness too. It is as pleasant to me “to smoke my canaster and tipple my ale in the shade,” as Thackeray says, as to any man. Anthony had no such turn. Work to him was a necessity and a satisfaction. He used often to say that he envied me the capacity for being idle. Had he possessed it, poor fellow, I might not now be speaking of him in the past tense. And still less than of me could it be said of him that he was ever driven to literary work deficiente crumenâ. But he laboured during the whole of his manhood life with an insatiable ardour that (taking into consideration his very efficient discharge of his duties as Post Office surveyor) puts my industry into the shade.

Certainly we both of us ought to have inherited, and I suppose did inherit, an aptitude for industry. My father was, as I have said, a remarkably laborious, though an unsuccessful man, and my mother left a hundred and fifteen volumes, written between her fiftieth year and that of her death.

Shortly after my final return from Birmingham my mother had a bad illness. It could not have been a very long one; the record of her published work shows no cessation of literary activity. Whether this illness had anything to do with the resolution she came to much about the same time to change her residence, I do not remember, but about this time we established ourselves at No. 20, York Street.

Here, as everywhere else where my mother found or made a home, the house forthwith became the resort of pleasant people; and my time in York Street was a very agreeable one. Among other frequenters of it, my diary makes frequent mention of Judge Haliburton, of Nova Scotia, better known to the world as Sam Slick, the Clockmaker. He was, as I remember him, a delightful companion—for a limited time. He was in this respect exactly like his books—extremely amusing reading if taken in rather small doses, but calculated to seem tiresomely monotonous if indulged in at too great length. He was a thoroughly good fellow, kindly, cheery, hearty, and sympathetic always; and so far always a welcome companion. But his funning was always pitched in the same key, and always more or less directed to the same objects. His social and political ideas and views all coincided with my own, which, of course, tended to make us better friends. In appearance he looked entirely like an Englishman, but not at all like a Londoner. Without being at all too fat, he was large and burly in person, with grey hair, a large ruddy face, a humorous mouth, and bright blue eyes always full of mirth. He was an inveterate chewer of tobacco, and in the fulness of comrade-like kindness strove to indoctrinate me with that habit. But I was already an old smoker, and preferred to content myself with that mode of availing myself of the blessing of tobacco.

“Highways and Byeways” Grattan we saw also occasionally when anything brought him to London. He also was, as will be readily believed, what is generally called very good company. He, too, was full of fun, and certainly it could not be said that his fiddle had but one string to it! His fault lay in the opposite direction. His funning muse “made increment of” everything. He was intensely Irish, in manner, accent, and mind. He had a broken, or naturally bridgeless nose, and possessed as small a share of good looks or personal advantages as most men. He first urged me to try my hand at a novel. He had seen some of my early scribblings, but repeated that “Fiction, me boy, fiction and passion are what readers want!” But I did not at that time, or for many a long year afterwards, feel within myself any capacity for supplying such want.

CHAPTER XIX.

On the 17th of August, in 1838, as I find by my diary, “I went with Henrietta Skerret to see the Baron Dupotet magnetise his patients.” This was my first introduction to a subject, and to a special little world of its own, of which subsequently I saw a great deal, and which shortly began to attract an increasing amount of attention from the greater world around it. The Miss Skerret mentioned was the younger of two sisters, the nieces of Mathias, the author of the once well known, but now forgotten, Pursuits of Literature. Mr. Mathias and his sister, Mrs. Skerret, had been old acquaintances of my mother from earlier days than those to which any reminiscences of mine run back. And Maryanne and Henrietta Skerret were life-long friends of my mother’s and of mine. They were left at the death of their parents very slenderly provided for, and Maryanne, the elder, became by the interest of some influential person among their numerous friends, received into the service of the Queen in some properly menial capacity. But of all those in the immediate service of Her Majesty, it is probable that there was not one, whether menial or other, equal to Miss Skerret in native power of intellect, extent of reading, and linguistic accomplishment. And this the Queen very speedily discovered, the result of which was that to her particular service, which I believe consisted in taking charge of the jewellery which the Queen had in daily use, was added that of marking in the volumes which Her Majesty wished to make some acquaintance with, those passages which she deemed worth the Queen’s attention. She remained with the Queen many years, till advancing age was thought to have entitled her to a retiring pension, which she was still enjoying when I saw her, a very old woman, two or three years ago. I know that she found her position in the household, as may be readily understood, an irksome and materially uncomfortable one. But of her royal mistress, and of every member of the royal family she came into contact with, she never ceased to speak with the utmost affection and gratitude.

The younger sister, Henrietta, died some years before her. I had of late years seen much more of her than of her sister; for of course the position of the latter cut her off very much from all association with her friends. Henrietta was as remarkably clever a woman as her sister, but very different from her. She was as good a linguist, but her natural bent was to mathematics and its kindred subjects rather than to general literature. And whereas Maryanne was marked by an exquisite sense of humour, and was always full of fun, Henrietta was, I think, the most judicial-minded woman I have ever known. I have never met the man or woman whom I should have preferred to consult on a matter of weighing and estimating the value of evidence. She was for many years, as was my mother also, an intimate friend of Captain Kater, who was in those days well known in the scientific world as “Pendulum Kater,” from some application, I fancy, of the properties of the pendulum to the business of mapping, in which he had been engaged in India. Young, Woolaston, De Morgan, and others ejusdem farinæ, were all Miss Skerret’s friends, especially the last named. And I was brought into contact with some of them by her means.

This was the lady who, in 1838, invited me to accompany her to a séance at the house of Baron Dupotet, a Frenchman, whose magnetising theories and practice were at that time exciting some attention.

Here is an extract from my diary written the same evening.

“The phenomena I have witnessed are certainly most extraordinary and unaccountable. That one young woman was thrown into a convulsive state, is entirely undeniable. Her muscles, which we felt, were hard, rigid, and in a state of tension, and so remained for a longer time than it is possible for any person voluntarily to keep them so—for, I should say, at least twenty minutes. A little girl became to all appearance somnambulous. This, however, might more possibly be imposture. When the little girl and the young woman were placed near each other, the effect on both was increased, and the girl instead of being merely somnambulous became convulsive. The little girl, as far as the CLOSE observation of the onlookers could detect [underlining in original], saw the colours of objects, &c., with her eyes closed. This, however, is evidence of a nature easily deceptive. When waked from her magnetic trance, she forgot, or professed to have forgotten, all that she had said or done when in it. But when again put into a state of trance or somnambulism, she again remembered and spoke of what had occurred in the former trance.

“After these patients were disposed of, two young men of the spectators offered themselves as subjects to the magnetiser. He said that they were not good subjects for it, and that it would be difficult to affect them, and would take a long time. He then tried me, and after a short space of time, I think not more than half a minute, he said that I was very sensitive to the magnetic influence, and that in two or three sittings he could produce ‘des effets extraordinaires’ on me; but that he was then tired, and that ‘rien ne coule plus’ from his fingers.”

It is not so stated in my diary, but I remember perfectly well that the general impression left on my mind by the Baron was not a favourable one. I find by my diary that I read his book, translated from the French by Miss Skerret, a few days afterwards, and the result was to increase the above impression. But I was far from coming to the conclusion that his pretensions were all chimerical. As regards his dictum about my own impressionability, I may observe, that on various occasions at long distant times, I have been subjected to the experiments of several professing magnetisers of reputed first-rate power, but that never has the slightest effect of any kind whatever been produced upon me. Sometimes I was pronounced to be physically a bad subject; sometimes I was accused of spoiling the experiment by wilfully resisting the influence; sometimes the magnetiser was too tired.

I think I may as well throw together here the rest of my experiences and reminiscences in connection with this subject—or rather some selections from them, for I have at different times and places seen so much of it, that I might fill volumes with the reports of my observations.

On the 13th of February, 1839, my mother and I dined with Mr. Grattan to meet Dr. Elliotson, and on the following day we went by appointment to meet him at the house of a patient of his, a little boy in Red Lion Street. I saw subsequently a great deal of Dr. Elliotson, and I may say became intimate with him. It needed but little intercourse with him to perceive that here was a man of a very different calibre from Baron Dupotet. Without at all coming to the conclusion that the latter was a charlatan, it was abundantly evident to me that Elliotson was in no degree such. He was a gentleman, a highly educated and accomplished man, and so genuinely in earnest on this subject of “animal magnetism,” as it was the fashion then to call it, that he was ready to spend and be spent in his efforts to establish the truthfulness and therapeutic usefulness of its pretensions.

Here is the account of what we—my mother and I—witnessed on that 14th of February, as given in my diary written the same day:—

“He put the little boy to sleep very shortly, then drew him by magnetic passes out of his chair, and caused him while evidently all the time asleep, to imitate him [Dr. Elliotson] in all his attitudes and movements. We both firmly believed that the boy was asleep. We then went to the house of another patient, Emma Melhuish, the daughter of a glazier, sixteen years old, and ill in bed from cataleptic fits.”

This was a very remarkable case, and had attracted considerable attention. Emma Melhuish was a very beautiful girl, and she was perhaps the most remarkable instance I ever witnessed of a singular phenomenon resulting from magnetic sleep, which has been often spoken of in relation to other cases—the truly wonderful spiritual beauty assumed by the features and expression of the patient during superinduced cataleptic trance, which has never, I believe, been observed in cases of natural catalepsy. I have seen this girl, Emma Melhuish (doubtless a very pretty girl in her normal state of health, but with nothing intellectually or morally special about her), throw herself during her magnetic trance into attitudes of adoration, the grace and expressiveness of which no painter could hope to find in the best model he ever saw or heard of, while her face and features, eyes especially, assumed a rapt and ecstatic expressiveness which no Saint Theresa could have equalled. It was a conception of Fra Angelico spiritualised by the presence of the breath of life. Never shall I forget the look of the girl as I saw her in that condition! I can see her now! and can remember, as I felt it then, the painfulness of the suggestion that such an apparent outlook of the soul was in truth nothing more than the result of certain purely material conditions of the body. But was it such?

Here is my diary’s account of what I saw that first day:—

“We found her in mesmeric sleep, she having been so since left by Dr. Elliotson in that condition the day before. We heard her predict the time when her fits would recur, and saw the prediction verified with the utmost exactitude. We heard her declare in what part of the house her various sisters were at the moment, saying that one had just left the counting-house and had come into the next room, all which statements we carefully verified. My mother and myself came home fully persuaded that, let the explanatory theory of the matter be what it might, there had been no taint of imposture in what we had witnessed.”

On subsequent visits we assured ourselves of the entire truthfulness of statements to the effect that Emma was conscious of the approach of Dr. Elliotson, while he was still in a different street, and to the punctuality with which she went to sleep and waked, at the hour she had named herself as that when she should do so.

I remember Dr. Elliotson relating to me, as an instance of the utility of the magnetic influence, a curious case to which he had been called. The brother of a young girl had, as a practical joke, suddenly fired off a pistol behind her head. She was of course painfully startled, with the result of becoming affected by a fit of hiccough so persistent, that no means could be found or suggested of making it cease. It was absolutely impossible for the girl to swallow anything. She was becoming exhausted, and the case assumed a really alarming aspect. It was at this conjuncture that Elliotson was called in. He succeeded in putting her into a magnetic sleep, with of course perfect calm, after which the hiccough returned no more.

But by far the most curious and interesting of Elliotson’s cases was one, of which a good deal was, I think, said and printed in those days, but of which very few persons, probably, saw as much as I did—the case of the two Okey girls. They were both patients, I believe for some form of catalepsy, in a hospital of which Dr. Elliotson was one of the leading physicians. Dr. Elliotson was obliged to throw up his position there, because those who were in authority at the hospital were bitterly opposed to his magnetising experiments and practice. And about the same time, or shortly afterwards, the Okey girls were dismissed for a cause which seems grotesquely absurd, but the story of which is strictly true. These girls, of, I suppose, about thirteen and fourteen, being in the very extraordinary condition which a prolonged course of magnetising had produced (of which I shall speak further presently) were in the habit of declaring that they “saw Jack” at the bedside of this or that patient in the hospital. And the patients of whom they made this assertion invariably died! That the presence of such prophetesses in the hospital was undesirable is intelligible enough; but what are we to think of the motives, presentiments, instincts, intuitions of mental or physical nature which prompted such guesses or prophecies?

Much about the same time my brother had a serious and dangerous illness, so much so that his medical attendants—of whom Dr. Elliotson was, I know not why, not one, though we were intimate with him at the time—were by no means assured respecting the issue of it. Now it is within my own knowledge that the Okey girls, especially one of them (Jane, I think, her name was), were very frequently in the lodgings occupied by my brother at the time, during the period of his greatest danger, and used constantly to say that they “saw Jack by his side, but only up to his knee,” and therefore they thought he would recover—as he did! I am almost ashamed to write what seems such childish absurdity. But the facts are certain, and taken in conjunction with the cause of the girls’ dismissal from the hospital, and with a statement made to me subsequently by Dr. Elliotson, they are very curious. I may add that when cross-examined as closely as was possible as to what they saw, the girls said they did not know—that they did know that certain persons whom they saw were about to die shortly, and that was their way of saying it. They, on more than one occasion, on reaching our house by omnibus, said that they had seen “Jack” by the side of one of the passengers—of course I cannot say with what issue.

The statement referred to was as follows:—Elliotson having been in some sort the cause of the two girls being turned out of the hospital, and being anxious, moreover, to continue his observations on them, took them into his own house. There looking out one day from an upper window, they saw across the street at the opposite window three fine healthy-looking children. They were, said Elliotson, the children of a hairdresser, who had a shop below. “What a pity,” said Jane Okey, “that that child in the middle has Jack at him. He will die!” And so within a day or two—it might have been hours, I am not certain—the child did die! Believing, as I do, Dr. Elliotson to have been a truthful and habitually accurate speaker, I confess that it does not satisfy me to dismiss this story, especially when taken in conjunction with the other anecdotes I have related, as mere “coincidence,” though I have no shadow of a theory to offer in explanation of it.

The purely physical experiments which were performed with these girls before my eyes were curious and interesting. I have seen those Okey girls, and they were slight small girls, lift weights, which it would be quite impossible for them to lift normally, not by applying the whole strength of the body and back to the task, but by taking the ring of an iron weight in the hand, and so lifting it in obedience to the “passes” of the magnetiser applied to the arm.

But decidedly the most singular and curious part of the case consisted in the abnormal condition of mind and intelligence in which they lived under magnetic influence for many weeks at a time. There were three conditions, or, as it might be said, three stages of condition in which I saw and studied them. Firstly—though it was lastly as regards my opportunities of observation—there was their normal natural condition. Secondly, there was a condition not of trance, or somnambulism, but of existence carried on according to the usual laws and conditions, but resulting apparently from the application of magnetism during prolonged periods of time, during which complete interruption of conscious identity seemed to have taken place. The third state was that of trance. In the first state they were much such as children of that age taken out of a workhouse, say, might be expected to be—awkward, shy, seemingly stupid, and unwilling to speak much when questioned. In the second state they were bright, decidedly clever, apt to be pert, and perfectly self-confident. And in this condition they had no recollection whatsoever of any of the circumstances, persons, or things connected with their previous lives. It was in this state that they talked about “Jack,” and in this state that we—my mother and myself—knew them for weeks together. While in this state a very slight accident was sufficient to produce cataleptic rigidity and trance; often one without the other. I remember one of the girls dining once with us in the middle of the day. A dish of peas was handed round, the spoon in which, it being hot weather, was no doubt heated by the successive hands which had used it. When Jane Okey grasped it in her hand to take some peas her fingers became clenched around it, and she could not open them. But there ensued no trance or other manifestation of catalepsy. On another occasion she was in my mother’s house playing on the accordion, which she did very nicely in her magnetic state, but could not do at all in her normal state, and I, sitting at the other side of the room opposite to her, and reading a book, was moving my hand in time to the music, though not thinking of her or of it. Suddenly she fell back in a trance, magnetised unconsciously by me by the “passes” I was making with my hand. I have also produced a similar result by magnetising her intentionally behind her back, while she was entirely unconscious of what I was doing.

But perhaps the most singular and remarkable scene connected with these girls was that which occurred when, their physical health having been very greatly, if not perfectly, restored, it became necessary to take them out of that “second state,” which has been above described, and to restore them to their former consciousness, their former life, and their parents. The scene was a very painful one. The mother only, as far as I remember, was present. Memory seemed only gradually, and at first, very partially, to return to them. The mother was a respectable, but poor and very uneducated woman, and of course wholly different in intelligence and manners from all the surroundings to which the girls had become habituated. And the expression of repulsion and dismay, with which they at first absolutely refused to believe the statements that were made to them, or to accept their mother as such, while she, poor woman, was weeping at what appeared to her this newly developed absence of all natural affection, was painful in the extreme.

Subsequently the daughter of one of these girls lived for some years, I think, with my brother’s family at Waltham, as a housemaid.

The next reminiscences I have in connection with this subject belong to a time a few years later.

We, my mother and I, had heard tidings from America of a certain Mr. Daniel Hume, of whom very strange things were related. It was no longer a question of physical specialties and manifestations, which unquestionably did tend, apart from their medical value, to throw some gleams, or hopes of gleams of light on the mysterious laws of the connection between mind and matter. The new candidate for the attention of the world claimed (not to have the power, as was currently stated at the time but) to be occasionally and involuntarily the means of producing visitations from the denizens of the spirit world. And before long we heard that he had arrived in England, and was a guest in the house of Mr. Rymer, a solicitor, at Ealing. We lost no time in procuring an introduction to that estimable gentleman and his amiable wife, and were most courteously invited by him to visit him for the purpose of interviewing and making acquaintance with his remarkable guest. We went to Ealing, were most hospitably received, and forthwith introduced to Mr. Daniel Hume, as he was then called, although he afterwards called himself, or came to be called, Home. He was a young American, about nineteen or twenty years of age I should say, rather tall, with a loosely put together figure, red hair, large and clear but not bright blue eyes, a sensual mouth, lanky cheeks, and that sort of complexion which is often found in individuals of a phthisical diathesis. He was courteous enough, not unwilling to talk, ready enough to speak of those curious phenomena of his existence which differentiated him from other mortals, but altogether unable or unwilling to formulate or enter into discussion on any theory respecting them. We had tea, or rather supper, I think. There were the young people of Mr. Rymer’s family about on the lawn, and among them a pretty girl, with whom, naturally enough, our young “medium” (for that had become the accepted term) was more disposed to flirt—after a fashion, I remember, which showed him to have been a petted inmate of the household—than to attend to matters of another world.